Key, Adriaen Thomaszoon (sold)
Adriaen Thomasz. Key (c. 1544 – 1589) was a Flemish painter, draughtsman and printmaker active in Antwerp. He is most known for his specialty work on portraits and altarpieces. Little is known of his early life. He is believed to have been born in Antwerp in 1544. He trained for a time under glass painter Jan Hack III, and was registered as a pupil at the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke in 1558. It may have been as early as this that he was employed by Antwerp painter Willem Key. He would eventually take over the shop, but the two were not related: in fact, he adopted his former employer's surname when he took over the shop in 1567; previously he went by Adreaen Thomasz., or Thomaszoon. It was that year that he was admitted to the Guild as a master painter. He appears to have been very politically nimble. Despite his Calvinist beliefs, he remained in Antwerp and took students during and after the Spanish sack of the city in 1585; despite remaining there, he received commissions from William of Orange (leader of the Dutch Revolt.) His death in or after 1589 is supposed due to his disappearance from the historical record at that point: it is not actually known that he died then, or simply finally abandoned the city.
Ortelius, himself.
[Untitled Portrait].
sold
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This is Philip Galle's portrait of Abraham Ortelius, first appearing in the 1579 edition of Ortelius' Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, Galle's engraving is after a portrait by Flemish painter Adriaen Thomasz Key (1544 - 1589), one of Antwerp's most prolific and successful portrait painters, and a guild-member with Ortelius. Key is known for his precise, almost photorealistic portraits making Galle's engraving the most accurate representation of the pioneering mapmaker available to the collector.
The portrait, in left profile, is presented in an elaborately garlanded strapwork frame. At the top is Ortelius' personal symbol: the Chi-Rho, flanked with Alpha and Omega - a Christogram - and the motto 'Vitae Scopus' (The goal of life). At the base of the portrait is an elegiac couplet composed by Andreas de Pape (1542 - 1581), a poet and musician, and also one of Galle's editors. His Latin couplet translates as: Ortelius gave mortals the world to look at, and Galle gave the world Ortelius to look at. (more details)
The portrait, in left profile, is presented in an elaborately garlanded strapwork frame. At the top is Ortelius' personal symbol: the Chi-Rho, flanked with Alpha and Omega - a Christogram - and the motto 'Vitae Scopus' (The goal of life). At the base of the portrait is an elegiac couplet composed by Andreas de Pape (1542 - 1581), a poet and musician, and also one of Galle's editors. His Latin couplet translates as: Ortelius gave mortals the world to look at, and Galle gave the world Ortelius to look at. (more details)